The use of IP (Internet Protocol) devices on home networks such as those now commonly found in many customer premises, e.g., homes, offices, etc., is now relatively common place. At least some IP content delivery systems encode content using MPEG-4 encoding techniques and then packetize the content for delivery via IP packet streams. While IP content delivery is growing in importance, older systems such as cable network content delivery systems often rely on delivery of content via one or more channels corresponding to particular frequencies, with the content which is encoded via MPEG-2 or another coding format being communicated over the channel, e.g., using QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), without the use of IP packets. Such channels which use QAM modulation to deliver non-IP based content are sometimes referred to as QAM channels since they are used for content delivery via QAM modulation. While QAM may be used to communicate information in IP packets, IP based content delivery is normally identified by the use of IP packets and IP related protocols to deliver content and thus are often referred to as IP channels or IP streams. For purposes of this application a QAM channel, to the extent that the language is used, is intended to refer to a channel which does not use IP packets to deliver video or audio content and instead relies on a different content delivery format, e.g., an analog signal format or MPEG-2 packets.
In order to recover data communicated over a QAM channel, the QAM channel is tuned to and the data, e.g., VOD (Video On Demand) content, broadcast program content or switched digital video content, is recovered by demodulating and decoding the communicated content stream, e.g., an MPEG 2 video stream or other non-IP based content stream. While the content stream may be encoded digital video, e.g., MPEG-2 video and/or audio packets, to recover the QAM channels a device normally requires a tuner with a QAM demodulator. The tuner/demodulator circuitry required to tune to and recover capable broadcast channels and/or other network channels is normally lacking in devices which are intended to be solely IP based devices.
Accordingly, IP devices, e.g., cells phones, IP set top boxes, etc., coupled to a home network often can not directly access or obtain content from non-IP based cable network broadcast and video on demand channels due to the lack of a QAM tuner and/or direct access to a QAM channel, e.g., a cable channel, of the content delivery network, such as a cable network, which supplies content to a customer premise, e.g., residence. Thus, while IP devices such as IP TVs and IP playback devices can playback content streamed via an IP packet steam, e.g., a unicast packet stream to the end device, they are often unable to take advantage of the existing non-IP QAM content delivery channels which are often available for providing broadcast channels, VOD and/or other content on demand because of the lack of suitable tuner/demodulator hardware.
While IP based content delivery is growing in importance with many consumer products and even new set top boxes being IP devices without conventional cable tuners/demodulators the existing content delivery networks remain in place are cable of delivering large amounts of content often in a format, e.g., MPEG-2 format, which in many cases provides a comparable or better image quality than that provided by IP based content delivery streams using the more advanced MPEG-4 standard or similar codecs.
While the more advanced codecs such as MPEG-4 offer and support higher compression rates than MPEG-2 encoders, unicast IP based content delivery can place a heavy burden on network resources since each end user device is sent a separate stream as opposed to multiple devices accessing the same broadcast or switched digital video stream. Thus, while MPEG-4 can provide high data compression rates viewer image quality can suffer as compared to MPEG-2 based QAM channel delivery methods given that MPEG-4 IP content streams are often subject to bandwidth constraints and/or best effort traffic delivery constraints associated with many IP networks used to deliver such IP based content in order to manage the overall load on the IP based content delivery network.
Given the existing deployment of non-IP based content delivery systems including cable QAM channel delivery systems and their ability to deliver high quality content to a large number of users in a relatively efficient manner, many network operators continue to rely on non-IP based content delivery systems while adding functionality intended to support unicast IP content delivery to devices, e.g., cell phones and/or other IP devices, which can't take advantage of existing infrastructure.
Thus, it should be appreciated that cable networks and/or other providers of content using non-IP based content delivery techniques are likely to continue to support non-IP based content delivery given the large number of existing devices already deployed. In addition, such providers are likely to also supply at least some content via IP delivery based approaches.
Given the cost of upgrading to IP content delivery systems, service providers are likely to provide a mix of IP content delivery and non-IP content delivery, e.g., non-IP cable network delivery methods. Currently, such services are often treated as separate services. While IP content delivery and non-IP content delivery may be provided by the same service provider, e.g., cable operator, different hardware and resources are often used to supply the content being delivered. While both IP delivered content and non-IP delivered content may traverse portions of a delivery network, e.g., a cable network, at the point of egress to a customer premise, much of the hardware and content delivery path up until the customer premise may be separate and distinct. For example, while a customer may receive IP data including MPEG-4 encoded and IP packetized content via the same cable entering the customer's house which provides MPEG-2 broadcast content to a traditional cable set top box including a tuner/demodulator and MPEG-2 decoder, the servers and other devices in the network which supply the content to the cable for delivery to the customer premise are often different.
As the non-IP based delivery system of service providers ages it is likely to become less reliable and require increased amounts of service to replace faulty elements or elements reaching the end of their service life. Since non-IP based delivery systems such as transmitters and modulator are often regional in nature, replacement or failure of a component of a QAM content delivery network is likely to result in a localized failure affecting several households corresponding to a service region without necessarily affecting other non-IP based channels or services.
Given that IP based content delivery is often provided using different frequencies and hardware than that used to provide non-IP based channels, it would be desirable if devices and/or household which primarily rely on non-IP based channels for content delivery could take advantage of IP based content delivery in those periods of time and for those channels associated with hardware failures and/or service related outages relating to a non-IP based channel without overloading the IP content delivery system.
While service reliability is an important issue, there remains a need to continue to provide new services and/or program channels as customer expectations change over time. Because of the nature, e.g., broadcast servers and configuration set up requirements, of existing non-IP based content delivery systems and the relatively large size of regions service by non-IP based system it is often more labor intensive to roll out new services on non-IP based content delivery systems than it is on IP content servers where delivery of content to users can be configured relatively easily with straight forward policy rules and/or on a server serving a small number of customers. Thus, IP systems tend to be good platforms for trial of new services while in many cases non-IP content delivery is preferred in terms of a long term deployment when it is desirable to provide a service to a large number of users in a bandwidth efficient manner.
In addition to methods and apparatus for improving system reliability it would be desirable if methods and apparatus could be developed which would facilitate deployment of new services, where service could be provided to multiple users in various regions even if the non-IP based systems for providing services were not immediately available and/or ready to support the new service at the time of service deployment.